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Try turning a gun inside out. See what happens.Perhaps you will find love there, around the bullets,or a story about love in a way you've never experienced,but you somehow know exists.

Try turning a paper crane inside out, or a thousand.See what happens. Reversed, they just make other animals,butterflies that refuse to eat for an entire lifetime,wounded elephants, and spiders that feast upon sunbeams.

Try turning your house inside out, like it has an eating disorder,and purges your books and CDs and unwashed laundry onto your lawn,the neighbor's lawn. See what happens when you try to talk it out ofdestroying itself, tell it its windows are not too small, it's kitchen not as big as it looks in that particular color.

Saw into your own skull and turn your brain inside out. Is it dead-colored silly string beef?Is it a litter of scattered Polaroids of your jumbled subconscious, glowing brighter and brighter as they absorb daylight for the first time?See what happens. See how powerful color can be. Dig through the mushand see if the mind really does have an eye.

Try turning your birthday inside out. See where it gets you. An alternate dimension. Two hundred more friends. Jumpingon your own coffin, alternating between the glee of a girl on a trampoline and a stormy amphetamine anger.

Try turning our love inside out and see if it is some kind oftwitching glittery fish. See if it has arms and wings and stripes.See if it is a stage of insects performing Shakespearean tragedy.See if it feels like mixing opiates with amphetamines. See whatyou say when I tell you I think we should get married again, because you put bright gaffer tape on everything and because of this green rope I ordered from the Internet.

Turn the universe inside out and see if the planetsshed their rings like snake skin. See once and for allif aliens exist. See if God exists. See if you are God.Run your fingers over its train-wrecked edges, and seeif you feel remorse.

Turn your pockets inside out and see if there is charity or greed. See if there is a collection of deer, starvedfor weeks. See if there's a mirror to check yourself in,to see if by the end of the night, your face is just one large red wound. See if self-consciousness is what's keeping you from utterly destroying yourself.

Photovirus

The daylight latches onto thingsfinds its quiet way into animal bowels and Iam just going to pushas hard as I can until I hear something break.

The modern world is tearing us apart like love, piece by piece, it is shoving usinto crowded warehouses andgetting us high on E.

Should I warn you I will destroy youand enjoy every word from your mouth?

I require 20 of whatever you have.I require a diamond box around my heart.I require the scalped trophy manes of horsesbrought back to me on golden platters.

I do not require batteries or food.

Interstice

Probably a lot of organs. Probably all of my parents' organs. Probably things like keys & locks.Probably the hot valleys where there is nothing to doexcept play in your meth lab and sell popsicles and shoot cats and dogs.

Probably small mountain towns with drunk peopleand crazy people and small creeks to play withyour blood in. Probably the South. Probablyjazzfest and a hot shotgun-style house, whichis probably one block from the Mississippi.

Probably space & time or earth & sky. Probably Fresnoor Modesto or Turlock. Probably the Rocky Mountainsand all their snow that I do not care about. ProbablyLockheed Martin in the Ken Caryl Valley where boys suckdick for people to like them and girls try to commitsuicide with one hundred Tylenol then have to drinkcharcoal in an ambulance, and they do not even lose one drop of blood or break one sad bone.

Probably lots and lots of blood. Probably blue blood.Probably a messy bedroom and a lack of contraceptives.

Probably paradise. Probably a homeless shelter. Probably eating fruit straight off the treesor a forty pound box of bananas. Probably severalwatermelons and bags full of bell peppers. Probablyeating olives for breakfast out of a can at the bus stopstaring at a model waiting for the zero before the sun is up.Probably an eating disorder and a stomach ache. Probably a handful of blue pills & a green apple.

Probably a psych ward and a small bed. Probably a riverof tears or an ocean of meat. Probably living in closequarters with strange men and mentally ill children.Probably a small room with padded walls, wearing someoneelse's clothes. Probably an emergency room, or two.

Probably not the military or anything war-related, exceptbroken vases and hearts and ears. Probably not a functionalhouse, and probably not one in New York.

Probably not two parents, and maybe not even one, maybe justhalf of one. Probably not many shoes or best wishes or Christmas.Probably not a basement or attic or garage with lots of thingsyou forget you have. Probably not your neighbor's cherry tree.

Andrea Jane Kato was born in the great state of California and was raised Buddhist by a gypsy-like artist mother (deceased) and a Japanese farmer who currently grows pineapples in Hawaii. She is a Capricorn, Dragon, INTJ, HSP, Atheist, singer/songwriter, abstract painter/ artist, iPhone photographer who likes yoga, fasting, and smoking. She has been published in magazines such as The Blue Jew Yorker, My Favorite Bullet, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Beat, Ditch, Pomegranate, ReadThis Magazine, and Alternativereel.